


Don't You Want To See These Clothes On Me

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [59]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, Fluff, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25286815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: The fam are invited to a costume party, and while hunting for outfits, they uncover some old favourites of the Doctor's...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Prompt Fills [59]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 17
Kudos: 66





	Don't You Want To See These Clothes On Me

**Author's Note:**

> From allnewtpir's prompt:
> 
> _13/Clara & Team TARDIS are invited to a costume party, and what better costumes than the Doctor's previous outfits._

“Doc…” Graham begins uncertainly, holding up a particularly foppish looking suit and wrinkling his nose as he pokes at the sharply-starched collar points and the cravat draped around the neck. Even to Clara’s eyes, it looks dated; she know precisely when it was worn, and knows how much the wearer enjoyed subverting the fashion choices of the era, but still, it seems excessive in its rejection of 1990s trends. “Has anyone ever told you that this wardrobe is nuts?”

“Quite a lot of people,” the Doctor notes, leaning back on the deckchair she’s lugged into the wardrobe for exactly this purpose and crossing her legs like a schoolchild. She looks remarkably unbothered by the semi-insult, in the face of it, but who knows what she’s thinking; her fashion choices are often a sore spot, so Clara resolves to ask her about it later, away from the team. “This level is a favourite, though, so don’t be rude. I wore these outfits for a long time… and the faces that went with them.”

“Is it just me,” Graham thinks aloud, his attention focused on Ryan and Yaz as he speaks, as though the Doctor and Clara aren’t present. “Or is it still really weird when she does that?”

Clara steals a glance over at the Doctor, who magnanimously ignores the comment but rolls her eyes a little in her partner’s direction. Clara can’t help herself; she lets out a small snort of laughter, remembering as she does so how strange it had felt for her to learn that the man she’d first met had in fact been a whole succession of men before that. It had been hard to grasp at first, and the way that the Doctor – that is to say, her first Doctor – had kept dropping casual hints about it had made her head spin.

“A bit, yeah,” Ryan mumbles, pulling out a dark blue suit on a hanger and letting out a low wolf-whistle of awe as he admires the long coat that comes with it. “I like this one.”

“You’d have liked him,” the Doctor grins, and Clara smiles too at the recollection of the day she’d spent with the wearer. “He was a fun one. Wore that with Converse and ran around the universe being snogged by… well, all and sundry really.”

“Did people used to snog you?!” Yaz’s eyes go as wide as dinner plates, and Clara stifles the urge to laugh again. “I mean, I know that Clara snogs you… but was it just… did random people used to do it?!”

“Oh, yes. Surprisingly often.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Clara chips in, her expression mischievous. “She makes herself sound entirely innocent, but she used to instigate quite a lot of the snogging.”

“Hey!” the Doctor protests, holding up her hands in protest and twisting to look at Clara, which nearly capsizes the deckchair. “I think you’ll find that I was predominantly the _snoggee_ , not the _snogger_.”

“Elizabeth the First,” Clara says at once, and the Doctor turns a violent shade of maroon and stops talking immediately, retreating into embarrassed silence and folding her arms.

“No… you never…” Graham looks equally impressed and appalled by Clara’s vague allusion to the monarch. “You can’t have. She was the Virgin Queen. We’d know if she’d-”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Clara says sweetly, ignoring the Doctor’s mutters of protest. “The Doctor got a bit distracted foiling a Zygon invasion before the wedding night, so nothing was ever consummated... at least not that day. No, he ran off with me instead; seemed a much better idea all round.”

“Stealing the Queen’s husband,” Ryan shoots her a look of respect, grinning at her as he does so. “That’s impressive. Surprised that she didn’t have your head lopped off for treason.”

“Clara and I didn’t… it wasn’t… she didn’t…” the Doctor begins weakly, apparently having recovered enough from her earlier embarrassment to speak and counter some of Ryan’s statements. “It wasn’t… it was the Zygons…”

“You eloped with Clara because of some Zyga-whatsits,” Ryan arches an eyebrow, looking between the two of them with a teasing expression. “That’s still very… I dunno, villainous of you, or something. You’d just married the Queen of England! I bet she weren’t happy with you.”

“She wasn’t,” Clara notes gleefully, adding: “She tried to chop his head off eventually. I haven’t had the misfortune to encounter her again… yet. I might meet the same fate, who knows?”

“Doctor!” Yaz says with reproach, but she’s grinning. “You can’t just… I dunno, wander through time and space snogging people and then breaking their heart by running off with your girlfriend. Or your wife, actually.”

“To be fair, that’s sort of her MO,” Clara points out, ignoring the Doctor’s concerned look at the mention of River. It would have bothered her once, but now it’s merely a factual point; an observation, rather than an accusation. Besides, there’s no rivalry there; they occupy different spheres of the Doctor’s mind, and each consider themselves to have a separate heart. They’d discussed as much the last time they’d had coffee; Clara favouring the left, and River the right. “And it’s usually not _my_ fault. Not back then, anyway; River did a lot of snogging before I arrived. She was more the bow-tie era… or she was until New York, and then I came along.”

“What happened in New York?” Ryan asks, his brow furrowing as he tangibly tries to flick back through the scant history of the Doctor that he’s been provided with in dribs and drabs. “And doesn’t what happens in New York stay in New York?”

“That’s Las Vegas,” Graham interjects. “Sorry, Clara. Carry on, love.”

“River’s parents were…” Clara breaks off, looking to the Doctor for guidance. Finding her partner’s gaze averted, she continues lamely, not wanting to upset the Time Lady: “It’s complicated.”

“They were displaced in time,” the Doctor says softly, looking down at her hands as she speaks. “Sent back… oh, a few decades or so. And I know what you’re thinking, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t go and get them. There were too many fixed points, and it was already such a complex spatio-temporal event that to mess with it even further… it would have torn a hole in reality itself. And River… well, she blamed herself, I think. She never really forgave herself for her part in it, involuntary as it was, and she never really stopped blaming me. Oh, she said she didn’t; she claimed she understood and she didn’t hold it over me. But after that, things were… not the same. She was nipping back and seeing them-”

“I thought you said…” Yaz interrupts, though with reluctance.

“Too complex for a TARDIS. TARDISes are big, clunky; they’re more likely to _damage_ time, especially when it’s delicate like that. No, River had… ways and means. Devices and methods that gave her the ability to slip through the cracks, to go back and visit them I don’t think she ever really got over it, though. I didn’t either, not for a long time.”

“What happened?”

“I did,” Clara says quietly, and there’s no trace of vanity or pride in her tone as she crouches beside the Doctor and takes her hand. The Time Lady’s eyes are unfocused as she her gaze turns inward, her attention held by something in her memory, and for several long seconds they stay like that, their fingers intertwined while the Doctor relives some moment of the past. The team say nothing. They’re accustomed enough to the weight of the Doctor’s trauma by now to know when to try to jolt her out of her memories of the past and when to leave her be, and so for several moments there’s nothing but the background humming of the TARDIS, and then the Doctor’s attention snaps back to the room.

“She’s right,” the Doctor smiles, but her eyes are still tinged with sadness, and when she speaks again it’s to deliver the faintly ominous line: “And then she died.”

“She…” Graham frowns in bafflement at this new nugget of information.

“And then Clara happened again,” the Doctor continues, seemingly enjoying her new role as creator of mysteries. Clara supposes she ought to complain; ought to demand the right to tell her own story, but the Doctor seems stronger with each word she speaks, so she leaves her be. “And then she died again…”

“She wh…”

“And then she happened _again_ and wanted nothing to do with me…”

“Because you were dressed as a monk, and you smelled,” Clara notes, adding her two pennies’ worth. “In my own defence.”

“And then she sort-of died…”

“And then some time later, I _actually_ died,” Clara adds helpfully, then gives them a little wave and flourish. “And now… ta-dah!”

“An abbot called you ‘the woman twice dead’ once,” the Doctor tells her, tilting her head to the side thoughtfully. “That title might need updating.”

“Sorry, Doc,” Graham holds up his hand, and Clara is reminded of her students. “What do you mean she kept dying? Clara? What?”

“Oh, I fell off a cloud,” Clara says breezily. She can’t quite remember it with any clarity; it’s like a memory wrapped in tissue paper and hidden behind a screen. It comes to her at night sometimes, as she sleeps; the memories of all of her echoes do. Flashes and snippets of lives well lived, playing out in her dreams. “And then I got turned into a Dalek, and blew up a planet. And then… I don’t really know how I actually _died,_ biologically speaking. I’ve never seen my death certificate. But there was a Quantum Shade, and uh… I was dead.”

“Right,” Graham says in a faint voice. “Because that’s totally normal.”

“Absolutely,” the Doctor reaches over and ruffles Clara’s hair. Clara thinks about complaining, then doesn’t; instead she simply smooths it back down and rolls her eyes. “What’s not normal about your other half having died three times?”

“Quite a lot,” Ryan deadpans, looking between the two of them with horror. “Like, really, quite a lot.”

“You’re no fun,” Clara teases. “Think of me as Schrödinger’s cat. Alive _and_ dead.”

“We do,” Yaz points out. “While we’re trying to ignore the snogging, and the flirting.”

“Which you do with such magnanimity,” Clara concurs. “Thank you. But I do believe the issue at hand was what we were all going to wear to the costume party the Governor of Venus has invited us to, not the Life and Death of Clara Oswald.”

“Well, I want the tweed,” Yaz says, reaching for the jacket and bow-tie that are looped over a nearby hanger. Clara and the Doctor both freeze for a moment, and Yaz notices; subtly readjusts her demeanour, and then bites her lip as she asks: “Was this…”

“First time I saw Clara,” the Doctor says, as casually as she’s able, which is still not very. “Yeah. Well, the first time that I remember.”

“Is it OK to wear it? Or is that weird?”

“It’s fine to wear it,” the Doctor grins, then frowns as she notes the obvious problem. “It uh… it should shrink to fit you; I think that’s how I programmed everything in here. You’re not quite as gangly as he was, so if it doesn’t then we’ve got a problem.”

“I’m having the cricket outfit,” Ryan decides, and the team collectively blink at him in stupefaction. “What? Can’t a black guy wear a cricket outfit?”

“No, it’s just… I thought you liked the suit,” Clara muses, trying to picture Ryan in the cream-and-scarlet outfit that looks so laughably like something from an Agatha Christie novel that she can’t quite picture _anyone_ wearing it. “The blue one.”

“Bit basic, innit?” Ryan shrugs. “Figured there’s something proper subversive about a black lad from Yorkshire dressing like posh white people. It’s a statement.”

“You’ll need some celery,” the Doctor adds. “There’s some in the kitchen... probably. If not, try the third-level allotment, sixth bed from the end. Or was it the seventh?”

“What…”

“For the lapel.”

“Why?”

“I used to wear celery pinned to the lapel,” the Doctor grimaces at the recollection, visibly embarrassed to even be reminded of it. “Don’t ask, alright. I picked it up on Castrovalva; it made me look civilised and it protected me against certain gases in the Praxis range of the spectrum.”

“Did anyone else understand any of that?” Graham asks, and the Doctor rolls her eyes.

“I was younger then,” the Doctor says, as though that explains everything. “It seemed like a nice idea at the time.”

“Graham, how about you?” Clara wonders aloud. “What’s your outfit of choice?”

“You know…” he looks around at them all, then says with some trepidation: “I was thinking about that rainbow coat.”

Collectively, the four of them gape at him.

“What?” he asks defensively, folding his arms and scowling. “If it’s a costume party, I want it to be obvious that it’s a costume and that I’ve made an effort. No one could mistake that for my normal clothes. Not a chance.”

“It’s urm…” Yaz pauses, searching for the right word. “Certainly… bright.”

“Exactly,” Graham preens. “So, it’ll look proper, won’t it? Like I’ve really tried. You lot can’t talk; none of you are making sartorial dress choices. Are you?”

“I am!” Ryan protests. “I’m subverting-”

“Other than you.”

“I’m wearing the blue suit then,” the Doctor decides, getting to her feet and holding her hand out for it. Ryan passes the hanger over, the coat swishing on the floor as he does so, and the Doctor smiles fondly as she runs the weight of the fabric through her hands. “Clara, what about you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Clara asks with a sly smile. “I’m going as you.”


End file.
